


Could It Be Simple?

by Merfilly



Category: Indiana Jones
Genre: Archaeology, Established Relationship, F/M, Slice of Life, Yuletide, Yuletide 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, it's just archeology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could It Be Simple?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eisoj5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisoj5/gifts).



Indiana Jones drove the last stake into the ground on the outer edge of the field in Peru to be excavated. He called out in good Spanish to the workers helping his students, getting them to start running the cording to make the grid. The students, in less perfect Spanish, guided the process, making sure that the entire area of operations was properly gridded without disturbing much beyond the surface levels of dirt.

"Dad would be proud of you," came a voice from close to his shoulder, and Indy had to give a lopsided grin.

"Your father would already be pointing out five things wrong, and making up the sixth," he said dryly. He straightened completely, and drew an arm around her waist, tucking her close to his side. "Did you hear about that find in Syria?" he began, only for her to hit him in the side, none too gently.

"Stop it, Indy. Leave the strange ones to that O'Connell boy. Or Mutt, when he's out of school."

Indy sighed at that, but he brushed his lips across the side of her hair. "Yes ma'am," he told her facetiously. His eyes spread out over the field, his blood thrumming with the possibility of finding a great Incan outpost. Even more, the possibility of finding something to confirm the Caral-Supe civilization in this area made him lick his lips in anticipation.

"You and I both know we're going to be lucky to find a few potsherds and fire traces," Marion told him, as if knowing just what he was thinking, throwing water on his ardor of archeology.

"How do you do that?" he asked her in exasperation, looking down at her fondly.

"I know you."

He smiled, turning enough to face her one on one. "What happened to the woman throwing whiskey back with yak herders? When did you get to be the smart one?"

She glared at him, eyes crinkling and nose wrinkling at him with fierce independence in every line of her face. "I always was the smart one. Dad even said so, remember?"

"Not so smart that he didn't lose his mind at the mere thought of you and me," Indy countered, remembering the blow-up in the middle of that last night, when Abner Ravenwood had confronted him over his relationship with Marion.

"I was only sixteen," she pointed out. "Dad might have been short-sighted about me and my being a girl, but even he couldn't ignore that."

Indy nodded. "I suppose so, even if it did make it a little difficult to convince you later to help me."

"You left." Marion let her distinct lack of being impressed then flavor her voice now.

"Your father made me." It was the standard protest in this round of their eternal banter and accusation.

"Doesn't change anything." That was a set step in the dance of the life they shared as well.

That made Indy laugh, full and rich, at her, at them, at the fact they were finally married after a life of hit and miss. She joined him, her sense of the ridiculous matched entirely too well to his.

"Come on, let's get the map updated, Doctor Jones." She pulled him toward their 'command' tent, chasing students out with a playful shout that they had work to do.

Indy had to duck his head with a half-grin on his lips, at the way the students giggled and whispered over the 'work' of the professor and his wife.

`~`~`~`~`

Normally, the dig would have stopped at twilight. The moon being so full and bright had lured one industrious student to continue, slow and delicate work with a hand spade and set of brushes, trying to be the first to get to the hidden knowledge beneath the soil.

"Moonlight's no substitute for true light," came Doctor Jones' gruff voice, startling the student into jumping nearly a mile in fright.

"Sir, I just..."

"Stop taking short-cuts. It will be here in the morning, Lucas. Go to bed." Jones shook his head as the recalcitrant look crossed Lucas's face. "For Pete's sake, you're twenty years old! Don't let this consume you, or you'll wind up a treasure hunter that gets himself shot at on a regular basis!"

"Yes sir, Doctor Jones." The young man scrambled away, only coming back to retrieve his tools, before obeying the stern professor.

Marion, perched nearby, waited until the young man was fully gone before laughing herself near sick. Indy looked at her in long-suffering innocence for all of a minute, before the slow grin cracked his features.

"I don't need the competition," he said in his own defense. "That Croft fellow in England is bad enough." He gave her his lazy, self-deprecating smile that was so full of sex and charm that Marion wished they didn't have half the site left to walk off.

"Indy, there are days when I wonder why I put up with you," Marion told him, reaching for his hand from the hillock of upturned earth she had sat on. He took it and pulled her close to him, so they could continue their walk through the dig-site, staying carefully on the pathways for just that purpose.

"I think it's all the ones that end in 'y'," he remarked back, setting her off again in soft laughter.  
`~`~`~`~`

"Doctor Jones! Doctor Jones! Come quick! There's something strange!"

Indy's heart hammered in his chest. Strange and him and Marion...fate save them, but how was he going to protect nine students and fifteen workers if his life exploded now? This was supposed to be a routine summer dig!

He came at a run that did not befit Doctor Jones at all, but Marion knew it as Indy-to-the-rescue, although he did have to hold his hat differently, since it was a respectable one, not that beat-up thing he insisted on wearing for their less respectable endeavors.

Of course, Marion, wearing the long skirt of a respectable professor's wife, was hurrying no less to get to the student in need, thankful for the trousers and boots under that pleated skirt.

"What is is it, Kasdan?" Indy asked, looking at section four, grid square nine where the student had been working.

"I thought the Spanish infiltration of the Incan Empire had not reached this area, but I just found a coin mixed into the rubbish layer here," Kasdan pointed out.

Doctor Jones prepared the lecture on cultural and artifact drift, even as Indy let his heart settle in his chest. Students not paying attention in class was a better scare than Nazis descending on the site, after all.

`~`~`~`~`

Twenty-one days of students, workers, and his wife with nary a Nazi, witch doctor, or soldier in sight had taken its toll on Jones by the end of the dig. Marion watched him fidget, watched the way his eyes darted from place to place in anticipation of the next challenge.

They'd have to get in touch with Sallah over his last telegram. Maybe that would give Indy the respite from the ordinary he seemed to need. Or they could accept Alex O'Connell's invitation to come see the Syrian find.

Of course, the way their luck rolled, they'd get back to campus and find Mutt on the couch, running from trouble.

No matter what happened to break the peace of an archeology professor's life, she had no doubt Indy was up for the challenge.


End file.
